WACHAPREAGUE, Va. -- Shame in the present director of the U.S. Secret Service causes me to pen this missive. I believe my status as a Secret Service retiree licenses me to respond to the blatantly political stance that director Louis Merletti has taken.

If first we examine how he attained his present position, we might better understand his motivations.

A couple of years after Bill Clinton took office, Merletti was appointed as the special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division. Being the practiced bureaucratic politician that he is, Merletti quickly endeared himself to Clinton and the White House staff. It is widely reported, and probably accurately, that when former director L.J. Bowron refused to bow to the White House and order Secret Service employees to testify falsely on Capitol Hill re Filegate, etc., he was forced out and replaced by Merletti, a more obliging "Clinton man."

Merletti has positioned himself solidly in Clinton's corner, and against Judge Kenneth Starr and the courts. He has made embarrassing, asinine, idiotic statements indicating that if Secret Service employees have to testify against a president in a criminal investigation, an assassination will directly and definitely result.

I don't know what kind of crystal ball Merletti is using, but it would be great if he would lend it to the rest of us for more important use. I would guess that there will be assassinations in the future, caused not by a president distancing himself from his protectors because of possible testimony but the president insisting on walking or riding in an open car down a parade route, jumping into crowds to "press the flesh," etc.

In a recent New York Times article on Merletti, former Secret Service assistant director Clint Hill, who jumped onto the back of the presidential limo when John Kennedy was shot, was quoted as saying that if he had been on the running board of the limo, Kennedy might not have been killed.

First, I would say this is completely speculative. Second, I don't know of any president (with the possible exception of Clinton, who apparently breaks all the rules all the time) who would be committing a criminal offense, requiring Secret Service testimony, while riding in an open limo in a motorcade/parade situation.

Merletti, in his quest to endear himself further to the Clinton White House, has politicized the Secret Service beyond any point in memory. The only argument against his resignation is that Clinton certainly would replace him with someone equally ambitious and subservient. The alternative is to ignore completely Merletti and his rantings.

Gene H. Gibson of Wachapreague, Va., is a retired agent of the U.S. Secret Service.